Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.

Tuesday, October 5 2010

It's certainly worthy of some kind of "recognition": An oil well spilled for almost three months off the Gulf Coast, killing at least 6,104 birds, 593 sea turtles and 98 mammals, not to mention untold numbers of blue fin tuna. This spill destroyed families, killed numerous jobs, and left beaches and swamp lands in ruin.

In honor of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, former BP head Tony Hayward has been presented with the Rubber Dodo Award from the Center for Biological Diversity. From their website:

“If there was ever a deserving Rubber Dodo Award recipient, it is Tony Hayward,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “While famously whining that he ‘wanted his life back,’ Hayward showed no remorse for the thousands of rare and endangered animals BP killed in its spill.”
....
“History will remember Hayward as the man at the helm of BP when it unleashed the worst environmental disaster in American history,” said Suckling.
“Hayward not only pushed BP into causing the spill by creating a corporate culture of risk-taking and cutting corners, he failed to take responsibility after the spill and make all of BP’s resources available to contain it.”

Why a "Dodo?" The site gives a little history on it:

In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius discovered a flightless, three-foot-tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus. (Contemporary scientists use the less defamatory Raphus cucullatus.) To the rest of the world, it’s the dodo — the most famous extinct species on Earth. It evolved over millions of years with no natural predators and eventually lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of humans or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.
Its trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681, the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and outcompeted by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover and pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation.